I live in Barcelona and over the last 10 years it has become a very expensive place to live! I come from London and when I go back to visit I am shocked at how similar Barcelona has become. The problem is that it´s now a tourist city second to none, the Spanish in general have become very greedy and prices have been hiked out of proportion to local salaries, many locals cannot afford to live in city centre any more - no different to what happened to London decades ago. Property is near London prices when taking into account the very low wages here - most people only take home 1,000 - 1,200 euros a month and work longer hours too. Going out to eat at decent restaurants costs around 30 - 40 euros per head, in UK it would be around 30 pounds, but people earn double there so this means for people relying on Spanish salaries, here it is much much more expensive.
Also, things like computers, tvs, furniture, household items are also more expensive than UK where we have more variety of big stores all competing with each other. Here, most shops, apart from a very few department stores, are family run and they just don´t want to be competitive.
For me, the only noticable cheaper items than UK are council tax (I own my property so have to pay yearly rates) and transport - it´s very true that in UK our train and bus fares are very high. However, long distant trains here are quite expensive too so things are changing there as well.
Salaries are the real problem though. Here in Bcn there are lot of foreign companies who come here because they know they can pay their work force some of the lowest salaries in Europe - it´s a fact that only Portugal and Greece have lower salaries. This is fundamental to one´s take on the cost of living. Of course, if you are lucky enough to move here with considerable wealth and be able to afford private schools and large flats then all the real problems won´t affect you. Like everywhere in the world it depends on your entry level and what the standards you have.
